No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.